The current study is a proposal that heads towards the vision of a polyphonic accompaniment of the evolution of allegory, journeying from a cavern, to the soul and out into the spheres of knowledge and representation. It examines the evolution of allegory from antiquity and goes deep into the study proposed by Walter Benjamin in his The Origin of German Tragic Drama, allowing for the analysis that allegory falls into two fields of interpretation: first that of representation, and second that of the articulation. With its articulatory power of expression of a convention, allegory transgresses limits and spaces, becoming a tool of expression and verification of the past through the process of investigation and of research. So being, allegory, a discursive material for the laying out of the past, redirects the reader’s view towards a forgotten, ruined and decadent past that awaits its redemption and incorporation within the historicist discourse. With this in mind, I would argue that allegory in the works of Carpentier and Saramago, far from being a stylistic device seen by critics as a way of escaping censorship, is a poetics resulting from repositioning history through the displacement of what is already signified, bringing forth, as a crucial component of History the decadent, the displaced, the ruins and the marginalized. Allegory is a way of disrupting, transforming and subverting—through the very archival work carried out by both authors—, the temporal and territorial vocality of definitive histories and official languages, mythologies and the politics of inherited Manichean allegories that typify the rhetoric of nationhood and nationalism. Works such as El arpa y la sombra, Los pasos perdidos and “Viaje a la semilla” of Alejo Carpentier and Memorial do Convento, A Jangada de Pedra and A Caverna of José Saramago examine a circular vision of life and history and its discontinuities, the decadent phases of history that beg to be exposed in the decadent ruins of its reality. Allegory, in my analysis, is the means through which man and history are only saved by exposing the past, failures, and decadence from the time of the lost Paradise.

This paper explores mythical and imaginary representations of America by Boris Vian and examines the personal and social context in which they were nurtured and produced. The purpose is to contribute to an understanding of the extent and nature of the transmission of cultural values and myths between the US and France in the period between 1930 and 1955, roughly corresponding to the most productive years of Vian's life. The central texts in this discussion are those in which the American influence is most strongly present: Vian's reviews of the jazz press, written for Jazz Hot over a period of 10 years, and his four pseudo-translations of American romans noirs published under the name Vernon Sullivan, especially J'irai cracher sur vos tombes. Background discussions include Vian's childhood in the Thirties, French opinion and the U.S., the importance of American expatriates and cultural imports like the New American Novel, cinema, black American writings, American influences in other mid-century French writing, and the war-time zazou movement. The evaluation of Vian's jazz criticism involves comparisons using critical texts from Vian's French and American contemporaries as well as new critical appreciations of recorded performances which would have influenced Vian. The readings of the Sullivan novels are accomplished through a comparative look at the hardboiled American school, specifically Raymond Chandler and James Cain, both writers explicitly acknowledged by Vian to have been major influences. The paper closes with an examination of the importance of myth in evaluating both the Vian production and its American antecedents.

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<p> This study examines the representation of women in Emile Zola&rsquo;s famous series Les Rougon-Macquart. Critics have described Zola&rsquo;s novels and their presentation of women as misogynist, yet this judgment obscures many of the textual details establishing the female protagonists&rsquo; relationships to industrial capitalism and the rapidly changing social landscape in late nineteenth century France. This study reexamines the narrative synthesis between Zola&rsquo;s naturalist &ldquo;objective&rdquo; narrator and his female protagonists. It also highlights one particular pairing that of Adelaide Fouque and her opportunist daughter-in-law, Felicit&eacute; Puch: Whereas Adelaide, the biological matriarch of the family who figures in each of the twenty novels, does not have an active voice, Felicit&eacute; as maternal <i>protectrice</i> of the family speaks frankly, even aggressively. Zola uses this pairing to link one generation to the next, a key structural element of his naturalist project. Ultimately, Zola&rsquo;s representation of women is more complex than might otherwise be understood.</p>

<p> In less than a decade since the onset of the global economic crisis, more than 2 million people have left Spain in search of work and the possibility of a livable existence. Many of these economic exiles are young and highly qualified, leading some to classify this exodus as a brain drain. Lingering labor market instability and growing mistrust in Spain&rsquo;s political system portend a challenging future for members of the so-called &ldquo;lost generation,&rdquo; both at home and abroad. Meanwhile, many questions remain about the lasting effects and repercussions of the crisis and massive departure of young Spaniards. </p><p> In response, the recession and ensuing surge in emigration have been popular themes of economic, demographic and sociological research in recent years; however, the cultural productions representative of this group remain relatively unstudied. The current investigation focuses on a selection of documentary films and fictional literature that portray the experiences of these highly qualified migrants. Through close analysis of these works, narrative patterns and trends appeared. These literary and audiovisual texts manifest the dialectical tensions of exile literature theorized by Sophia McClennen as well as the complex nostalgias of Svetlana Boym. They also reject and redefine the generational terms imposed upon them, express diasporic solidarity and call for political involvement and collective action. The rhetorical undercurrents at work in these constructions of individual and group identity suggest the emergence of an archetypal narrative of the new Spanish migrant. The cultural negotiations implicit in this narrative seem to confirm that sweeping but gradual societal changes are taking effect, even beyond Spain's borders.</p>

From the courtesan Esther in Honoré de Balzac’s Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes (1838-1847) to the femme sterile in Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal (1857) to Edgar Degas’s nudes, women’s objectified bodies dominated artistic attention in nineteenth-century France. Appearance defined their roles, and tropes often replaced women in narratives centered on male desire. However, the women in these works resist erasure and challenge feminine passivity and marginalization. This dissertation explores their ambiguous female identities and their strategies of resistance. The tension in Balzac’s, Baudelaire’s, and Degas’s works between objectifying women and their textual importance emerges through the relationships among subject, object, and the abject self (as defined by Judith Butler) and among the narrator, the work, and sometimes the reader or viewer. The male gaze limits women’s identities within the subject-object-abject framework. In turn, these women exercise soft power to alter their status and identities. Joseph Nye defines soft power as attracting others and co-opting their power to achieve one’s goals. Through gender theory, I redefine these women, not only as objects of desire, but also as narrative subjects. In Balzac’s novel, Esther negotiates social dynamics to define her identity. She progresses from passive object to untenable abject self to literary subject. By using her body, creating documents, and crafting ritualized social encounters, Esther claims ownership of herself. In Les Fleurs du mal, Baudelaire often portrays women as a pretext for poetics. Yet, “La Chevelure,” “La Beauté,” “L’Homme et la mer,” and “Le Serpent qui danse,” display signs of feminine power. Baudelaire stages interactions between the poet-narrator and the sexualized woman and counteracts the subject-object binary through the gaze. Both the poet-narrator and representations of the feminine are necessary to advance the text. Degas’s nudes hinge upon voyeurism, objectification, and self-representation. Degas’s women are ambiguous, as shown in selected brothel monotypes, bather pastels, lithographs, and sculptures. Through Caroline Armstrong’s and Kathryn Brown’s readings of the monotypes, I demonstrate how these works challenge the male gaze and grant the female nude at least partial status as narrative subject. Tracing these works across media elucidates a female interiority that resists objectification.

<p>Abstract This dissertation is a project that examines the way Middle English romances explore and build a sense of national English/Christian identity, both in opposition to and in incorporation of the Saracen Other. The major primary texts used in this project are Richard Coer de Lion, Firumbras, Bevis of Hampton, The King of Tars, and Thomas Malory?s Morte Darthur. I examine the way crusade romances grapple with the threat of the Middle East and the contention over the Holy Land and treat these romances, in part, as medieval meditations on how the Holy Land (lost during a string of failed or stalemated Crusades) could be won permanently, through war, consumption, or conversion. The literary cannibalism of Saracens in Richard Coer de Lion, the singular or wholesale religious conversions facilitated by female characters, and the figure of Malory?s Palomides all shed light on the medieval English politics of identity: specifically, what it means to be a good Englishman, a good knight, and a good Christian. Drawing on the works of Homi Bhabha, Geraldine Heng, Suzanne Conklin Akbari, and Siobhain Bly Calkin, this project fits into the overall conversation that contemplates medieval texts through the lens of postcolonial theory to locate early ideas of empire.

<p>Saidou, Amina. Bachelor of Arts, Universite Abdou Moumouni de Niamey, Spring 2006; Master of Arts, Universite Abdou Moumouni de Niamey, Winter 2009; Bachelor of Arts (English/TESOL), Wilson College, Spring 2011; Master of Arts, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Spring 2013; Doctor of Philosophy, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Spring 2018 Major: Francophone Studies Title of Dissertation: Allegorie initiatique et engagement feminin a travers la litterature et le cinema francophones de l?Afrique subsaharienne et du Maghreb Dissertation Director: Dr. Amadou Ouedraogo Pages in Dissertation: 382; Words in Abstract: 380 ABSTRACT African women?s struggle for freedom can be thought of as an initiatory journey, an allegorical quest. Their long-lasting fight for emancipation happens to be about challenging and subverting traditional, patriarchal, and religious institutions. This research that focuses on female main characters analyzes the process of their emancipation as a journey. Through this study, we aim at deconstructing western feminist ideology and its stereotyping of African women. In doing so, we contribute to an understanding of African women identity(ies). Women in West and North Africa, just like westerners, often face misogyny and discrimination. Socio-cultural beliefs, religious, political, and historical standpoints are proven to be factors that contribute to undermining women?s self-fulfillment. Also, they are factors set to create discrepancies between African and Western feminisms as well as between African types of feminisms. Therefore, these factors should be taken into consideration when conceptualizing and analyzing African women. Although this can be true for most African women, authors construe and characterize their female characters as heroines. They discharge themselves of ?masculine domination.? This work first examines the representation of African women social status and interaction in francophone literary and cinematographic works. Next, based on critics like Pierre Bourdieu?s concepts of habitus and symbolic violence, the second chapter analyzes African women?s social behavior in reaction to oppression. Though violence is experienced through habitus, women who escape can free themselves through an undertaken journey. In this way, the third chapter examines women?s use of different strategies to resist oppression. Consequently, women need to overcome various challenges that they encounter. Overall, we ground our research on theories such as post-colonialism, deconstruction, feminisms, negofeminism, and the concept of ?everyday resistance? or cultural resistance. Also, we examine the authors? standpoints and purposes through their representation of heroines. African women are no more where/who they used to be. Nevertheless, because of deep-rooted and obsolete African cultural beliefs, they still have to fight hard for a more advanced emancipation. Unperceived violence can be more damaging for women who face challenges. Key fundamental aspects are the persistence in raising awareness and revisiting African traditions, values, and practices; encouraging women?s political and religious education; and fostering their economic enterprises for financial self-reliance. Most importantly, women?s self-awareness with regard to their ?reproduction of symbolic violence? is the key factor for this battle ground.

This dissertation is an interdisciplinary and comparative study of German and Italian memory culture after 1945. It examines how the interaction between memorials, litera-ture, historiography, and popular culture shapes a society's memory and identity. I focus on two marginalized aspects of the memory of the Holocaust: the Nazi "euthanasia" program directed against the mentally ill and disabled, and the Fascist persecution of Slovenes, Croats, and Jews in and around Trieste. I couple my analysis of memorials to these atrocities with an examination of the literary and artistic representations of the traumatic events in question. My work thus expands the definition of site of memory to encompass not only the specific geographical location of a historical event but also the assemblage of cultural artefacts and discourses that accumulate around it over time. A "site" therefore denotes a physical and a cultural space that is continuously re-defined and rewritten. The two memorials I analyze, Grafeneck and the Risiera di San Sabba, bookend the Holocaust, revealing a trajectory from the systematic elimination of socially undesirable people, such as the mentally ill and disabled, to the full-scale racial purification of the "final solution." The lack of survivor testimony about these sites has been a major factor in their continued marginalization within the discourse on Holocaust memory, which is why it is all the more important to consider the way these events figure in other genres and other media, such as novels, short stories, poems, biographies, TV-dramas, and theatre plays. This approach allows me to shed new light on canonical works such as Günter Grass's The Tin Drum or the TV-Series Holocaust and to bring into focus works that have so far not received the critical attention they deserve. Through my analysis I show how certain authors participate in a process of vicarious witnessing, lending their voice to those who were not able or permitted to speak for themselves. By bringing these underrepresented sites and memories into focus, I not only argue for a more inclusive memory culture but also reveal how the politics of commemoration continue to lead to the exclusion of persecuted minorities. Thus, my dissertation participates in the broader project within Holocaust studies of opening the discourse to de-particularized, transnational perspectives and other victim groups.